


soul worn down to the pavement, bloody

by saltsmoke



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 17:37:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14218263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltsmoke/pseuds/saltsmoke
Summary: a feeling of sadness, repentance, or disappointment over something that has happened or been done





	soul worn down to the pavement, bloody

**Author's Note:**

> inspiration pulled from many songs

157 Days After

 

It still hurt. It hurt worse than a thousand dark room's in consecutive order. The dark room, leaving when she was only a child, even watching Chloe get shot that very first time didn't hurt as bad as knowing that nothing could be changed now.

 

Max sealed Chloe's fate in that bathroom. Chloe didn't deserve to die in a Blackwell bathroom; she didn't deserve to die at all.

 

Time doesn't measure grief like love does. And god, did Max love her.

 

No one understood, they couldn't even begin to. No one knew why it seemed like a piece of Max died on that bathroom floor too. Or why it kept her up at night, or why she locked herself away in her dorm for days at a time, or why she'd gone out of her way to avoid that hallway and that bathroom. They just didn't understand.

 

How could they?

 

That week never happened.

 

Chloe died alone. She died thinking Max hadn't come back. She died thinking everyone she'd ever loved abandoned her. Max knew now that she would damn the world for Chloe if she was able to choose again. She would choose Chloe. Over and over.

 

Max couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't take sitting in her room or the texts and calls from everyone except her.

 

So, she did the next logical thing; she ran.

 

She ran from Chloe's death like she ran from William's.

 

She left the building and ran across the grass, past the Tobanga and into the woods.

 

Someone was calling after her.

 

It was too loud.

 

She couldn't breathe.

 

She ran until her lungs burned.

 

She ran until she felt numb.

 

And then she fell to her knees and onto her back. Max looked up at the stars from where she laid among the fallen leaves, ignoring whoever's voice calling her name until it morphed into Chloe's.

 

Tears threatened, prompting her to screw her eyes shut for a brief moment.

 

She forced them open and stared up, willing her thoughts to dispel or at least cling to a happy memory. And it did, but to all her memories of Chloe until one of them stuck.

 

The best one.

 

The photobomb.

 

The dare.

 

The kiss.

 

Despite herself, Max smiled and laughed a terribly sad laugh and held onto the image.

 

The world went quiet around her save for a calm breeze and it was almost soothing, almost enough to comfort her. **Almost.**

 

_When you're dead._

 

_I'm going to see you real soon._

 

_Don't worry._

 

Max closed her eyes, listened, and let the stars pull her under with a promise of goodbye while the whistling trees sang her to sleep.


End file.
